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(b Ascoli Piceno, 1694; d Ascoli Piceno, April 17, 1781).

Italian sculptor and architect, son of Giuseppe Giosafatti. He was sent to study with Camillo Rusconi in Rome, where he did stucco decorations in SS Simone e Giuda. He returned to Ascoli Piceno c. 1718 to work with his father. His major work is a sculptural group for Ascoli Piceno Cathedral, St Emidio Baptizing St Polisia (1725–30; in situ). In 1731 he executed the altar of the Madonna of Peace in S Agostino (sketch, Ascoli Piceno, Pin. Civ.). His high relief terracotta bozzetto of St Emidio in Glory is in the Pinacoteca Civica, Ascoli Piceno. A similar bozzetto (Baltimore, MD, Walters A.G.), dated 1757 and signed lg, has been attributed to Lazzaro by Rosenthal. His style, like that of Pierre Legros the younger and Filippo della Valle, both of whom he knew in Rome, combined classical and Baroque elements. While his father’s style was more severe, Lazzaro exemplified the Italian Rococo....

(b Rome, Feb 10, 1702; d Rome, July 28, 1786).

Italian architect, sculptor, draughtsman and designer. He owed his career to the patronage of cardinals Alessandro Albani (see Albani family, §2) and Annibale Albani. Like the Marchionni family, the Albani family came from the Marches. Marchionni first trained as a sculptor, then studied architecture at the Accademia di S Luca in Rome under Filippo Barigioni, winning the first prize in 1728, his final year. Marchionni’s prizewinning drawings demonstrated his exceptional talent as a draughtsman, always far greater than his inspiration as an architect. Cardinal Alessandro Albani engaged him to build his villa in Anzio as early as 1728 and in 1734 commissioned Marchionni to design the façade of the collegiate church at Nettuno. Both are conventional works carrying the imprint of the Accademia, revealing a clear commitment to the past in their use of 17th-century architectural motifs. Marchionni worked as a sculptor between 1730 and 1748. His most interesting sculptural work is the tomb of ...

Flemish, 18th century, male.

Born 1714, in Comblain-au-Pont; died 19 December 1791, in Paris.

Sculptor, engraver, architect.

Flemish School.

Jean François de Neufforge was a pupil of Blondel and Babel. He first worked in the Rococo manner. He published several architectural books for which he engraved the plates....

(b Oct 7, 1684; d April 24, 1754).

French sculptor, architect and designer. He was the son of Jean-Baptiste Pineau, Sculptor-in-ordinary to the King, and would have had considerable early contact with his father’s workshop. He studied architecture with Jules Hardouin Mansart and for some time was a pupil of Germain Boffrand. After studying at the Académie de Saint-Luc he went to Lyon, where he married into a family of sculptors. He was also familiar with the workshop of the silversmith Thomas Germain, who surrounded himself with sculptors and architects. In 1716 Pineau was engaged to work for Peter the Great in Russia, with his brother-in-law Joseph Simon (fl 1716–76), the painter Louis Caravaque (1684–1754) and the architect Le Blond, Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste. Pineau’s contract specified that he was to be engaged for works of ornamental sculpture, but after the death of Le Blond in 1719 he was also able to provide ambitious architectural projects. He participated in the decoration of the palace at Peterhof and in the provision of wooden panelling for Peter the Great’s study (...

German, 18th century, male.

Born 23 February 1696, in Wernfels; died 29 October 1765.

Sculptor. Religious subjects.

A court sculptor and architect, Matthias Seybold is the most important representative of the Rococo style in Eichstätt, Germany. His work was inspired by religion and was produced mainly for the cathedral of Eichstätt....

(b Braga, 1720; d Braga, 1769).

Portuguese architect and designer of altarpieces. His work, which is confined to Braga and the province of Minho, combines the Portuguese Baroque tradition with elements of Bavarian Rococo in an exuberant style full of lyricism, formal invention and ingenious plasticity. It was rediscovered by Smith (1958), having long been assigned to ‘an unknown master’.

Soares was the son of a wealthy businessman of Braga. In 1737 he took minor orders and in 1738 entered the Brotherhood of St Thomas Aquinas, becoming its major-domo in 1760. It is not known where he received his training, but it is probable that he knew the Braga artist Marceliano de Araújo and that he had access to the rich repertory of forms available in contemporary Augsburg engravings, which are known to have been in circulation in Braga. His first documented work is the frontispiece to the Statute Book of the Brotherhood of the Infant Jesus and St Anne (...

(b Woodford, Essex, 1714; d London, Sept 27, 1788).

English architect and sculptor. His father Robert (1690–1742), a master mason and monumental sculptor with a successful business in and around the City of London, apprenticed him at the age of 18 to the sculptor Henry Cheere. On completion of the apprenticeship he was given ‘just money enough to travel on a plan of frugal study to Rome’, but his studies there were cut short by news of his father’s death. On his return home he found the family finances in disarray; nevertheless he took over his father’s yard and soon prospered, even though it was some time before the debts were paid off. His own reputation as a sculptor was sufficiently advanced by 1744 for Parliament to commission from him a monument to Capt. James Cornewall in Westminster Abbey, London. In the same year he won the commission for the carved pediment of the Mansion House, London (a building on which his ...

(b Braga, Dec 18, 1731; d Tibães, Aug 30, 1808).

Portuguese designer, wood-carver, sculptor and architect.

His godfather, the Reverend Constantino da Cunha Soto Maior (d 1757), was treasurer of the Cathedral of Braga, and one of his brothers, João de Araújo Ferreira Vilaça (b 1720), was clerk to the Vicar General of Vila Real in Trás-os-Montes. Frei José’s early training was with his father, Custódio Ferreira, a skilled carpenter. In November 1754 Frei José signed his first contract to carve the retable of the high altar of the church of the convent of S Clara, Amarante. From 1757 he worked at Tibães, near Braga, the headquarters of the Benedictine Order in Portugal, where, with José de Álvares de Araújo, he collaborated on carving the magnificent talha (carved and gilded wood) designed for the church of S Martinho by André Ribeiro Soares da Silva. The work began with the high altar, for which Frei José carved the statues of SS Martinho, Bento and Escolástica, and the whole scheme, one of the finest in Portugal, was subsequently completed in ...

(b Ehrenstetten, Dec 10, 1710; d Freiburg, Aug 1, 1797).

German sculptor, painter, stuccoist and architect . He went to Italy as a journeyman and spent two years (1729–31) in Rome, then six months in Strasbourg. His earliest surviving work is the font at the monastery of St Peter in the Black Forest. From 1735 to 1737 he was in Paris, where he attended and won prizes at the Académie de St Luc. In 1737 he carved the large figures for the high altar of Oberried Monastery, and in 1740 he made eight huge stone figures for the portal (destr. 1768) of the monastery of St Blasien in the Black Forest, and also made models for the stairwell figures. Wentzinger signed the contract for the magnificent tomb of General von Rodt in Freiburg im Breisgau Cathedral in 1743. In 1745 he made a model of the Mount of Olives for the church of St Martin in Staufen (now in Frankfurt am Main, Liebieghaus). For the new building at Schloss Ebnet, near Freiburg, he created the stone relief on the gable, figures representing the seasons in the park and stucco sculptures for the salon, modifying the original plans for the building by decorative embellishments. He also painted the double portrait (...

German, 18th century, male.

Born 10 December 1710, in Ehrenstetten; died 1 July 1797, in Freiburg.

Sculptor, architect. Religious subjects. Statues.

Wenzinger was one of the most important Rococo sculptors in southern Germany. He sculpted statues, tombs and Ways of the Cross for several churches. From ...